


Larksong

by ConstanceComment



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Circus, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Community: makinghugospin, Gen, Kink Meme, Past Child Abuse, Random & Short, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 09:23:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConstanceComment/pseuds/ConstanceComment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someday, they're going to be free. Every last one of them. No more dog-and-pony shows, no more stop-and-stares; they're going to slip their chains and not look back. But not without her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Larksong

**Author's Note:**

> A minifill from a kinkmeme prompt:
> 
> "Basically, they are all forced into a freak show/traveling circus, constantly locked up/under supervision, horridly treated, and trying to get free (Perhaps the Thenardiers could run it?). The Amis could either be non-humans or just look that way.
> 
> Grantaire was born with lumpy, almost horns on his head, and a stump of a tail, so they call him a devil, and put him in a cage with supernaturally beautiful Enjolras, who they call an angel. Jehan is little and pretty and fey, so he has to dress up in a skimpy fairy outfit and dance for lusty men. Courfeyrac is a cat-man/acrobat. Bahorel is a strongman. Feuilly is a knife thrower, and Marius is his target. Bossuet is a buffoon, and Joly is the doctor who would leave the circus in a second if he wasn't loyal to the performers."
> 
> Prompt in its full text is [here](http://makinghugospin.livejournal.com/13289.html?thread=8711145#t8711145), fill is [here](http://makinghugospin.livejournal.com/13289.html?thread=8731881#t8731881).

Someday they’re going to be free.

It’s the promise they pass to one another at night, when the Madame and her husband are gone, when Éponine comes with her brother to pick all the locks on the cages that she can reach, stolen keys passed around to buy a night of freedom.

“Really free,” Enjolras emphasizes as he stretches his own clipped wings and strains to be aloft, looking to up towards the place where the Thénardiers keep their prize. “ _All_ of us,” he promises, wings straining out, hands reaching up, because that’s the truth of it, isn’t it? They could have left years ago, except for who they would have to inevitably leave behind.

Suspended from a ceiling beam is a single tarnished, oversized birdcage, the gold paint flaking off the bars. Inside, sitting on the thin beam clutched between clawed bird feet, is a young girl in a thin white shift, her knees pulled to her chest as she hunches forward, singing as loudly as she dares into the night. 

The papers the Ringmaster makes to advertise bill her as the Lark but Cosette is more like as to a starling now; stretching out from her arms are two dark wings peppered with starbursts that end in hands clawed the same as her feet, the skin yellow and scaly. Bright, the patterns embedded in her pinions wink when she twitches, her wings spreading to flex sometimes, the places where they had been clipped showing brutally when she does. 

The Lark is a small winged girl with a voice like starlight despite the starvation that had keeps her short and thin, their masters leave her in the only beam of light afforded by the gaping holes in the patched up tent that is the closes thing they have to a sky. Despite the horrors of her life, the abuse worn into her skin by a lifetime of pain, Cosette has remained beautiful, though her hair is tangled, though her wings are clipped.

It is for her they stay, and the Ringmaster knows it. The Madame may be cruel but her husband is cunning, and it is by his command that Cosette remains so many feet off the ground, farther than Enjolras can fly on his own clipped wings, higher up than even Courfeyrac can reach in a single bound, no matter how Bahorel launches him into the air. Cosette is the bargaining piece, the object that tethers them to the ground more surely than their chains.

No one is free until the Lark is free. No one leaves unless they all leave; these are the rules they have written under their skins, the real chains that keep them from running. True they live with disadvantages and hobblings; Enjolras’s strong wings clipped, Grantaire’s crippling dependence on booze, Jehan’s weakened constitution from his constant exposure to iron. But they have enough free humans, enough members of the circus on their side that they could easily be free of the Madame and her husband if they wished it so.

They could have been free any time they wanted to be, gone screaming for the hills with Joly’s help, with Éponine’s access to the keys. The good doctor could have hidden them, the Madame’s daughter could have taken her siblings and the cage keys any time she wanted to, let them all out. And, before, she has offered, face tight and angry as she promises to care for the Lark, to do as she’s always done, try to help the pretty girl her parents won’t let her near.

“I want you all _safe_ ,” Éponine mutters night after night, imploring.

Most often, it is Jehan who corrects her, thin iron-stung hand on her wrist, the fey smiling sadly up at the Giantesses’ daughter. “We are not leaving,” he says, “not without her, and not without you.”

And Éponine turns away, as always, unlocking the burning iron chains her keep around the changeling’s wrists, a bitter scowl etched in her face as she goes to free the others, hands held out through the bars to grasp at midnight freedom.

Above, the Lark sings plaintive in the night, paints a picture of castles and silence, away from the world of prying eyes that mock her clawed feet and her winged arms.

Below, her family waits for her, and suffers with her, because they would rather live in chains than leave her behind.

**Author's Note:**

> Might make this into a series of small fics as my time frees up, but I promise nothing.


End file.
